Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

For many Mums this will be the perfect Mother’s Day gift so publication at this time is perfect.Here is the authors’ introduction:

How we came to write this book

In 1998, Virginia Pawsey (née Sinclair) organized a reunion of our small class of Seventh Formers from Gisborne Girls’ High School. We spent Waitangi Weekend in Gisborne reacquainting ourselves with classmates we hadn’t seen since our last school assembly.

Gillian organized a picnic for us in Eastwood Hills Arboretum. It was hot. We sat around a picnic table and, while the almost forgotten power of the Gizzy sun beat down, each of us told our life story. Virginia and I had led totally different lives. However, we had also both suffered tragic bereavements. And we both loved our gardens.

Before the weekend was over, we all did what Gisborne girls always did then and still do today — we all went to the beach and threw ourselves in the surf. Then everyone scattered, back to their own worlds. The Wainui tide swirled in and pulled back out, and the sand was wiped clean.Virginia and I started emailing each other. We’ve never stopped emailing since. Common Ground is a selection of those emails.

Janice Marriot is a Wellington-based renowned author of books for young adults while Virginia Pawsey is a Canterbury farmer. They are both passionate gardeners and this charming and warm story is largely, but certainly not only, about their year in the garden. They are two very different women gardening in very different environments- inner city and remote rural, North Island and South Island, small cottage garden and large tree featured garden – the differences are many. But their love for gardening is absolutely common to them both.A gentle. heartwarming story which will make perfect reading on those days when it is too wet or cold to be in the garden.

Appealing line drawings throughout, like this sleeping labrador, although it does not give the artist's name..